Posted
by
timothy
on Tuesday July 12, 2011 @12:31AM
from the this-way-to-the-egress dept.

dopeywan.kenobi writes "The Australian Law Reform Commission are conducting a review of the Australian Classification laws, the outcome of which will influence Australian internet filtering and/or the long awaited R18+ Video Game classification. Public submissions on the matter have been accepted since 20th May 2011 and will close on the 15th July 2011. From the article : '[A]s yet only 80 public submissions have been made — 80 per cent of them from people who believe in government intervention for the sake of child protection. Considering, the furious debates within Australia's technology communities, does this reflect the national balance?...'It's likely down to the media for failing to inform the public on the matter.' Having read the questionnaire, I can't help but wonder if their convoluted phrasing is contributing to reports that people are only partially completing the form without submitting." I wonder how much of it, too, is that people don't want to be tarred as favoring child pornography just because they're uncomfortable with by-domain censorship.

This is pretty standard
But as far as the summary is concerned, the comment down at the bottom tells me that a fear campaign has been launched that seems to think anyone that is against censoring the internet. Sure, child pornography is wrong, and gross, but seriously? Why dont you go after those downloading it like we do in the USA?
It seems a heavy handed, open solution that can be easily abused is a worse solution than finding people who download it.
But whatever, I live in the USA.

I was rather unimpressed with some of the submissions which seem to think that this inquiry is only about the classification of Games in the R18+ category, people unaware that when it was talking about media platforms it meant via what media (print, audio, TV, Cinema, interactive) rather than what games platform (XBox, PS3, PC, etc). I hope such people didn't clog the tubes too much that the important information was lost. A lot of the random ones I clicked on seemed to miss the point with a lot of

But I don't really have a problem with the concept of domain filtering or domain takedowns for child pornography.

I think it's dangerous to apply it to much else, and I'm not sure I can envisage a system that can actually stop it effectively, or maintain enough transparency to satisfy me that other "non-approved" content isn't being filtered.

And of course I totally disagree with the power being extended even to other illegal activities (file sharing, anarchist's cookbook type stuff, for instance). So for me

It's like laws that make it illegal to not report a crime. We've recently had one pass for child abuse.

If you're sufficiently psychopathic to not report child abuse when you see it, the legality of that decision going to change your behaviour?

The only effect this law has is when the time comes to investigate the death, every family member, neighbour, and other person associated with the child says "I had no idea anything was wrong. I never saw bruises. I never saw the mother hit her child." And no one has a

However, it is good for getting politicians positive press and appeases the "they should be doing something" crowd, so it's not totally pointless I suppose.

It is totally pointless from the social perspective to deceive that crowd in believing that you really do something when in fact you are sweeping the garbage under a carpet - the garbage is still inside the home.

I can understand the appeal in doing so for the politicians, but this is not to say that I like or approve it.

Every politician wants to do something about child abuse, but why on earth would that something be to stop it?

The physicians have little to gain in curing the illnesses. Except they took an oath to do so and can be banned for life from practicing if they step aside too much from it.Why, oh why, isn't the same with the politicians?

It's like laws that make it illegal to not report a crime. We've recently had one pass for child abuse.

If you're sufficiently psychopathic to not report child abuse when you see it, the legality of that decision going to change your behaviour?

No, it's to prevent social workers, teachers, police etc turning a blind eye to child abuse. We have similar laws/requirements in the UK. If you work in a nursery or school and see a child come in with bruises down its arm, you can't just go "oh well, I'm sure they fell down the stairsa cooouple of times just like their crack-addict whore of a mother assures me".

You fucking report it. You don't have to be a psychopath not to want to get involved, most people would rather not.

I think the position taken by most of the "horde" is that governments have consistently shown that they will either list sites incorrectly or just outright abuse filtering systems like this. To quote an earlier story: [slashdot.org]

Additionally, despite the claim that the main aim of the filter is to block child pornography, only 313 of the 977 total sites blocked is on the basis of child porn. At $40M AU so far in taxpayers funds, the cost so far is around $40,900 per blocked URL. Government efficiency at work...

40 thousand dollars per URL. I think that's really all that needs to be said. Even if every one of those URLs was related to child pornography, I'm sure that spending the $40 million on actually catching people who abuse children would be an infinitely better allocation of resources.

40 thousand dollars per URL. I think that's really all that needs to be said. Even if every one of those URLs was related to child pornography, I'm sure that spending the $40 million on actually catching people who abuse children would be an infinitely better allocation of resources.

Don't worry, once they have all the automated tools in place and this gets abused, that price will drop to a few cents per URL making those free-speech sites even cheaper to block!

Multiple legitimate businesses and Web sites have been banned including two bus companies, online poker sites, multiple Wikipedia entries, Google and Yahoo group pages, a dental surgery and a tour operator.

That was the/. article I was looking for before (with specific examples of baseless additions to the list). Turns out it was one page farther back in the results. The fact that Wikileaks had to provide the list speaks volumes for the sort of attitude the Australian government (though they're not alone) has towards the public in this matter.

What people hould understand is that child pornography is already illegal. It is already classified in other legislation and there is a mechanism for detecting and arresting those involved with it.
Forget the filter, give the money to the AFP so they can do some good with it.

40 thousand dollars per URL. I think that's really all that needs to be said. Even if every one of those URLs was related to child pornography, I'm sure that spending the $40 million on actually catching people who abuse children would be an infinitely better allocation of resources.

1. It is the censorship that's obscene, not the content.

2. I'd somehow accept the idea of a "content classification" if it would limit to being "advisory only"

3. A content *in itself* or being exposed to it should never be made illegal. The laws needs to prevent the illegal *actions* undertaken in creating or distributing content of any kind, but stop right before involving any control to accessing the content.

2. I'd somehow accept the idea of a "content classification" if it would limit to being "advisory only"

FWIW, even "advisory" ratings result in censorship due to the economic impact of the ratings.

One example is how Wal-mart won't carry music with one of those "explicit lyrics" ratings. For really big acts, that means a wal-mart edition with the naughty words blanked out and an uncut edition for all the other stores. But for most acts, there is only enough money to produce one edition and since wal-mart is the largest music distributor, that one edition is usually the wal-mart friendly, censored version. (

In other words, there really is no such thing as an "advisory only" rating system, there will always be a price paid in censorship as the result of any ratings system. Some people don't have a problem with that price, but it at least needs to be acknowledged when talking about such plans.

Speaking for myself, I don't have a problem if I can obtain the uncensored version from somewhere - but you are right: I'd need to know that the wmart version is censored for me to try get it from somewhere else.

2. I'd somehow accept the idea of a "content classification" if it would limit to being "advisory only"

No, they want to ban child sexual abuse sites, not restrict them to adult paedophiles only.

3. A content *in itself* or being exposed to it should never be made illegal. The laws needs to prevent the illegal *actions* undertaken in creating or distributing content of any kind, but stop right before involving any control to accessing the content.

Depends where you live, bu in a lot of places (e.g. here in the UK) simply having the content is illegal already.

The argument is that you can only get the content by recording actual child sexual abuse in the first place, therefore viewing it is (a) being an accessory to the crime and (b) encourages more of the same real life child sexual abuse to be filmed

although on 3:the problem is that for fear of the "I have no idea how that got on my laptop" defense they intentionally write the law such that not knowing you possess it isn't a defense.

So it makes it into a weapon. You may have seen the story a while back of the person who wanted his bosses job so he planted child porn on his bosses computer and reported him. I can only wonder how many such cases like that aren't uncovered given that that one was only uncovered due to the perpetrator being stunningly stup

I don't know for sure, never saw one, but I think that I would found them horrible.BTW, I also found images of massacres horrible, but horror movies are not made illegal.

What I am sure though is that the act of raping children to produce that images is a crime.

2. I'd somehow accept the idea of a "content classification" if it would limit to being "advisory only"

No, they want to ban child sexual abuse sites, not restrict them to adult paedophiles only.

Somehow I fail to see the difference between the two, would you care to elaborate? (make sure you revisit the definition for the paedophile before).

3. A content *in itself* or being exposed to it should never be made illegal. The laws needs to prevent the illegal *actions* undertaken in creating or distributing content of any kind, but stop right before involving any control to accessing the content.

Depends where you live, bu in a lot of places (e.g. here in the UK) simply having the content is illegal already.

Directing your attention to the should in the should never be made illegal: a hint that I know that.

The argument is that you can only get the content by recording actual child sexual abuse in the first place, therefore viewing it is (a) being an accessory to the crime and (b) encourages more of the same real life child sexual abuse to be filmed.

I guess the problem would generally be to find a sensible consensus on "what should be filtered". Personally, I don't care too much for child porn, but I'd really like if hate speech (at least the really silly and insane one) went away. Others will want the same with conspiracies. Or how about anti-religious speech? I'm pretty sure a lot of fundies would like to get rid of that. Or how about finally getting rid of those scare videos on Youtube?

I guess the problem would generally be to find a sensible consensus on "what should be filtered". Personally, I don't care too much for child porn, but I'd really like if hate speech (at least the really silly and insane one) went away. Others will want the same with conspiracies. Or how about anti-religious speech? I'm pretty sure a lot of fundies would like to get rid of that. Or how about finally getting rid of those scare videos on Youtube?

Laws regarding "decency" will never be based on consistent criteria. Because everyone defines "decency" differently.

I think if you did a poll you'd find that almost everyone would class child pornography (i.e. the recording of real life child sexual abuse/rape) as a bit more than a question of "decency".

Whether internet filtering will make that much differnce is another matter.

At what stage do you think media hysteria bombarded you sufficiently - as it has done with so many people - to think an image of child abuse is a special case, so much worse than any other sequence of bits which acts as evidence that some abuse has taken place? What about a picture/film of adult sexual abuse? If the adult is developmentally retarded? Animal abuse? A snuff film? An image of a dead baby? A woman executed for being raped? A war crime? Evidence of genocide?

Ask yourself whether your concern is with the image or with the discomfort you feel that someone enjoys the image. Then realise that people may enjoy any or all of the above. Then realise that almost all sexual abuse occurs within families or by other people in trusted caring roles - if you want to use a sledgehammer to crack a nut, you would stop far more child sexual abuse by outlawing the family unit.

The noncommercial distribution of CP seems reasonably to be a privacy issue for the child, as any photo/video taken without consent. Beyond that, all the resources should go toward identifying and stopping the abusers and helping the victims. To inform the abused that money which you are claiming to be using in their interest is going to be invested in pushing images of his/her abuse underground (and as the thin end of the wedge for general censorship [ispreview.co.uk]) is not only illogical, but cruel.

Also, let's be clear here: the IWF, one of the oldest Internet censorship frameworks in the Western world, doesn't even claim that its aim in blocking is to stop CP (it does help stop CP by acting as a clearinghouse for CP reports and sending evidence to authorities at home and abroad - but that's where its helpfulness ends). It claims that its blocking list is provided to stop people "accidentally" viewing CP. This shows how absurd the situation is: surely the correct response to accidentally doing something which isn't dangerous is to learn from your mistakes so you know how to minimise your chances of doing it again? But no, we're at the "punished for being raped" stage of hysteria, where I must worry about the legal implications of accidentally stumbling into CP. It's not that a single such incident is likely to lead to conviction, but that - in the UK at least - a single such incident may lead to arrest, and my arrest record can be studied by pretty much any potential employer.

Any good government knows how to make anyone a criminal or quasi-criminal at its whim. This is just another method. It has nothing whatever to do with stopping child abuse, and I say that as someone who has fundraised for kids' charities and supported certain groups for abuse survivors for as long as I can recall.

"At what stage do you think media hysteria bombarded you sufficiently - as it has done with so many people - to think an image of child abuse is a special case, so much worse than any other sequence of bits which acts as evidence that some abuse has taken place? What about a picture/film of adult sexual abuse? If the adult is developmentally retarded? Animal abuse? A snuff film? An image of a dead baby? A woman executed for being raped? A war crime? Evidence of genocide?"

no, it *has* to be media hysteria that has warped my fragile little mind

You haven't explained why there's something special about sex which means that publications with a sexual element are worse than, say, publications with a non-sexual violent element. Of all the many methods of tackling the problem, you're precisely stating the popularly promoted solutions with the usual "there'll be no feature creep" reassurance, while also not justifying the approach.

Blocking it puts off the 'casual' viewer and constricts the market.

Are you a casual viewer? If not, what information are you using to make statements based on the actions of the casual viewer

The solution which uses moral means and which works best is the best solution. (The proposed solution has neither property.) To suggest that every solution must be based upon some particular belief system is religion.

What is the solution that uses "moral means" that "works best" resulting in the "best solution" and that does not rely on a belief system?

"Here's we'll apply market principles because the market is shown to work in this case," would be relying on evidence.

"Here we'll apply market principles because all problems must be solved using market principles because the free market always works," would be relying on a belief system.

You might want to argue that my statement is vacuous because, well, confidence in science and evidence and stuff is itself a belief system. But that would be deliberately obtuse, and it's not proper form on the Internet to

No, I haven't, because that's not my assertion. You made that bit up all by yourself.

"And I would apply this to all of your list up to and including the snuff film." You've rejected the examples where there's an obvious social benefit to publication such as videos/photographs of genocide. But you've happily included all the examples which the popular media commonly suggest are shared for kicks.

By your argument I assume you have concrete evidence to the contrary? That there is no market effect? No escalation from viewing to buying?

You can't just assert a connection between two things (one which I see you're now trying to be deliberately vague about) and then demand that other people prove that there is no connection. It's doubl

"You've rejected the examples where there's an obvious social benefit to publication such as videos/photographs of genocide. But you've happily included all the examples which the popular media commonly suggest are shared for kicks."

No, I rejected the ones in which someone is deliberately harmed in order to obtain the footage, which is then distributed for kicks. there is a difference.

You can't just assert a connection between two things (one which I see you're now trying to be deliberately vague about) and

No, I rejected the ones in which someone is deliberately harmed in order to obtain the footage,

You seem to know a lot about child abuse. Are you sure that child sexual abuse doesn't happen because the abusers enjoy it? The filming may be secondary.

Meanwhile, an oppressive government will often make executions and its own war crimes very public, possibly recording and rebroadcasting, for the chilling terror effect on others who may dare to resist it. Someone is deliberately harmed in order to obtain the footage.

which is then distributed for kicks. there is a difference.

They're all distributed for kicks.

I'm not suggesting laws. In fact you'll see if you read my comments that I disagree with them based on the possibility of abuse of said law.

The "child sex abuse" term is one used by the child protection industry^Wcharities because they object to "child pornography" as if it's just another class of porn rather than evidence of abuse. I don't particularly like the term.

The problem comes when people regard something sexual or enjoyable as inherently more/less evil than something done in a somber and serious manner. Asking a compliant kid to give you a blowjob may be considered more repulsive than killing a kid for witnessing some crime, say, but k

Because obviously, I could never come to these conclusions myself, no, it *has* to be media hysteria that has warped my fragile little mind. Has to be.

I don't think you realize just how personally unflattering your alternative explanation is. It's one thing to blithely go along with whatever authority proposes without thinking about it too much since it doesn't really personally impact you. It's a far worse proposition to have thought long and hard about a subject and come to such an abjectly poor conclusion

Blocking it puts off the 'casual' viewer and constricts the market. And we all believe in market based solutions, right?

When has "constricting the market" like that ever worked?War on Drugs? Nope.Copyright Piracy? Nope.Prohibition? Nope.

I don't think you realize just how personally unflattering your alternative explanation is. It's one thing to blithely go along with whatever authority proposes without thinking about it too much since it doesn't really personally impact you. It's a far worse proposition to have thought long and hard about a subject and come to such an abjectly poor conclusion

I came to this position having briefly played with freenet some years ago and seen what it was largely used for.

Do you see the difference between not supporting something and outlawing it?

Some things go beyond "not supporting". I do "not support" the random murder of people who wear red trousers, but more to the point I would go so far as to say that such murders should, be outlawed.

If you didn't personally go around murdering people wearing red trousers, but were indifferent as to whether others did, your "not supporting" the murders would be pretty close to actually supporting them.

You may think of my position as "personally unflattering" if you wish.

Thanks for your permission. But that wasn't the question I asked. You ignored the issue of effectiveness which says to me that you know just how counter-productive your position is but aren't willing to face up to it.

I don't have a problem with the concept. I am not retracting anything.

I have a problem with any execution that is proposed because politicians (and people in general) can't be trusted, but the concept, no. This is no change from where we started.

Also I have a case where constricting the market works just fine - Singapore. Would never want to live in that society, but they've been pretty damned effective at stamping out drug use. You also might want to consider how many people in western places like the US a

I don't have a problem with the concept. I am not retracting anything.

I have a problem with any execution that is proposed

So, you don't have a problem as long as we are taking about a fantasy land where there are no consequences. That is exactly the kind of BS word dancing I predicted.

Also I have a case where constricting the market works just fine - Singapore

Capital punishment for dealers and they still had 2000 drug users arrested in 2010. That's only a reduction of 66% from the early 90s. Doesn't sound like all that huge of a success to me even if you ignore the societal costs.

Your naive view that regulation is never effective at all is exactly that, naive.

Outlawing, especially with mandatory death penalties, isn't "regulation" it's full on prohibition and even your best exa

I know the sentence was intended to be facetious but:
"Then realise that almost all sexual abuse occurs within families or by other people in trusted caring roles - if you want to use a sledgehammer to crack a nut, you would stop far more child sexual abuse by outlawing the family unit."
And mandate what in its place? Surely the family unit is responsible for many degrees of socialisation and sociopathy but I wouldn't begin to know the right search terms for alternatives to the family unit. And the implic

At what stage do you think media hysteria bombarded you sufficiently - as it has done with so many people - to think an image of child abuse is a special case, so much worse than any other sequence of bits which acts as evidence that some abuse has taken place? What about a picture/film of adult sexual abuse? If the adult is developmentally retarded? Animal abuse? A snuff film? An image of a dead baby? A woman executed for being raped? A war crime? Evidence of genocide?

Oddly, the idea of viewing images of child sexual abuse has for most people the same arousal factor as looking at a picture of an execution or evidence of genocide, i.e. none at all. However, for the freaks who do find them exciting, it's a fuck of a lot harder to go out and become a government executioner or genocidal maniac than it is to abuse real children.

I accidentally viewed some CP once. I was browsing around some non mainstream websites(not porn) and I got a bunch of pop ups appear and every time one was closed another would open. The pop ups were hard core CP images. This happened about 12 times and the last pop up was an advertisement for one of those evidence eliminator type programs. I wonder how many copies that strategy managed to sell?

On a side note, I have come across some really disgusting porn (in my opinion anyhow) which would probably get blocked if Australia ever gets a filter but it is harder to wipe your mind of the the images then it is to just close the tab/window...

The problem is what to do in edge cases. Obviously a site dedicated exclusively to child porn should be shut down. But what about a website that happens to have child porn? Surely such videos have been uploaded to youtube, should youtube be shut down? What about dropbox, surely criminals use that to share illegal files. How about encrypted services, where it's impossible to know whether or not the data being transferred is legal, should those be shut down?

"Surely such videos have been uploaded to youtube, should youtube be shut down?"

This is why things can be filtered at the URL level. Of course there have been problems with the implementation of this and the heavy-handedness of application in countries like the UK, but it's certainly possible - pending contact with the site's owner within a reasonable timeframe.

And worst of all, how do we, the people, know that a website shut down for child porn actually had child porn on it? Maybe it was shut down for some

How? To do that, you need every HTTP connection going through a proxy. If someone uses HTTPS, then it doesn't work at all. All that the proxy knows is that you initiated an encrypted connection with some server (which may be hosting thousands of unrelated sites). The URL is part of the encrypted request.

They haven't got it perfect yet but I believe that what happens in their current setup is that when a URL is identified, all traffic on the ISP's network to that server is routed through a proxy that then filters on specific URLs.

Yes, it's implemented that badly by the vast majority of ISPs in the UK - everything through a proxy and not even a transparent one. This means that any site which makes significant use of the client IP is likely to break, most obviously filesharing sites where one dolt uploading CP means every single request ends up coming from a single proxy IP and per-IP bandwidth limits are hit within minutes.

Some ISPs are contemplating moving to deep packet inspection but that still won't do anything about HTTPS or non

Nursie, you're either an extremely dedicated (browsing quickly through your posting history) troll playing a typical Conservative, or your convictions are so mind-numbingly genuine that you think it's possible to simply deny the content of a post you made only a few minutes ago.

You have no problem with "domain filtering or domain takedowns" for CP.

That means, unless you're about to argue for vigilante justice, that you support government involvement in censorship at the domain level for CP.

"That means, unless you're about to argue for vigilante justice, that you support government involvement in censorship at the domain level for CP."

No, I don't support any filtering that has humans administering it, because humans are both fallible and corruptible. And as we have no perfect alternative I don't support any filtering at all. Sorry if you didn't get this from my previous posts, I have mentioned it a few times now.

It's already illegal to publish child pornography... on the internet and on paper. So what is, what Australia is exactly doing?Basicly Australia plans to filter out child pornography that got posted illegally anyway to people not aware of the child pornography.The message to the people is: "We can't do anything about child pornography, so we will hide it from people who don't want to see it."If you actually know where the child pornography was posted (otherwise you couldn't filter it), why not find out who

They're probably right about the convoluted questions deterring submissions. Yet I also think that's a good thing, since the people who submit their opinion should have an understanding of the issues.

I fear that articles such as this one will pull in a particular demographic who will share a narrow world view, say 20 something gamers who are not raising children and have no concern in community issues.

My apologies for that stereotype, but I've noticed that the perspective of young adults shifts radically o

Whoa, wait a minute, nobody said I have to be a parent when I want to have kids! You can't change the rules of the game in the middle of it! I just wanted that child support payment and park my rugrat in front of a babysitting box, it worked for TV, why not the internet?

Yes, parents should parent. And some parents do a very good job at it while others are negligent.

The thing is, even good parents don't have control over what a child hears and sees. Sometimes that is because they have to hand control over to other people. Sometimes it's because they need to give their child some independence, in order for their child to become independent.

How can a parent offer their child some independence without having the unscrupulous business owner pumping up violence and porn just

I don't see any problems with that. The parents would have to actually parent. It's not like the internet is a safe place to park young children anyways.

The point is that no child, adult or paedophile should have access to images and videos of actual child sexual abuse. There is no need, it can only have harmful effects, and you have no right to get your jollies of the actual physical abuse of children (or unconsenting adults) filmed for some sicko's amusement.

My apologies for that stereotype, but I've noticed that the perspective of young adults shifts radically once family and/or community plays a stronger role in their lives.

This is very much true. However, in this case my fear is that the very valid, or at least valid sounding pretext (blocking cp) is going to result in other sites being blocked. Which will result in domains being blocked that are whatever the censors will block. Whoever has the most money or the most desire to censor is going to ultimately d

CP is a unique case because it is illegal and seems to be illegal in most jurisdictions. So if a domain is blocked because of that content (and from what I've heard, the Aussies are blocking domains and not IP addresses), it is because the domain's owner decided not to keep their operations clean. So, in many respects, they are to blame.

As for the consultation and (presumably follow-up legislation), that will ensure that the classification and censoring (keep in mind, they are distinct) are applied more u

So why not shut down the site and prosecute the site owner instead? It's not like CP has some safe haven anywhere (and if it does it will probably be in a country without good network access anyway). Since the government however never chooses that route one has to question if it really is CP that they are after.

I didn't realise it was like this. I just filled out the questionnaire.

Referring to a post by MacTO above (and some others, not to single you out -- sorry no offence intended at all), no I don't fit that demographic. I don't agree with child porn or exploitation. I also don't agree with the crap that the current (and previous!) government are trying to shove down citizens throats.

Just to be clear, I didn't mean to suggest that the singled out demographic agree with child porn or exploitation. Yet they do seem to be more willing to accept it as the cost of (their absolutist views of) freedom. Well, things just don't seem to be quite as absolute once you are responsible for someone else's life.

I don't know what happens in AU, but here in the UK (As I can personally verify from trying to look at the above link when it was blocked), ISPs tend not to actually give a block notice. Instead they spoof a 404 message, making it appear the file is gone. Unless the site admin is someone who checks the webserver logs and notices something is up, the owner might not even realise they have been blocked - only that they are mysteriously very unpopular in some countries. The users certainly wouldn't realise - u

The only thing I remember being actually blocked in Australia (until now of course) was some overseas male porn star who shared the same name as an Australian Idol winner or finalist, and somebody accidentally posted the URL of the former instead of the latter in the media release (.com instead of.com.au I think). And even then it wasn't really censorship... I think the user just got a message like "sorry... we think you probably meant to go to.com.au instead of.com", with an option to go to the original

actually blocked in Australia (until now of course) was some overseas male porn star who shared the same name as an Australian Idol winner or finalist, and somebody accidentally posted the URL of the former instead of the latter in the media release

because some marketing guy published the wrong URL all/some ISPs redirected the traffic to another page?

the rationale for this operation is imo even worse than the arguments for blocking child pornography...

The classification review isn't just the internet filter and R18+ for games, it's also about applying a rating system to art and a number of other things. There's also a number of people who are proposing the R18+ rating specifically to protect children, so that 80% means just about nothing.

Having been one of the first people to instigate an ePetition before the Qld Parliament, and having been summarily told that the Attorney General "doesn't really give a rats", I have become more than a little jaded about our government's commitment to reform.

90's style Change Management is about making the punters believe that they contributed to, and actively selected, the course that you had already plotted for them.

Welcome to this centuries' witch hunt! And as usual, it's not even about witches.

When you look down the history of witch burning (from medieval actual burning to the commie craze to the CP hype of today) it's not about protecting us from some evil bad man (or woman). It's just a nice tool to silence those who do and say things that certain people do not like but they didn't really break any other law, so we need another angle of attack.

It's not like there's no CP on the web. But please tell me, who is bette